


With Such Fell Cruelty [Illustrated]

by Jainas-in-English (Jainas)



Series: Hannibal fics [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Art, Fanart, Fanzine, Gen, Illustrations, Intimacy, M/M, Murder Husbands, Museums, Paris (City), Post-Canon, Post-Fall (Hannibal), dante's inferno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-22 22:40:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21309793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jainas/pseuds/Jainas-in-English
Summary: On a dark red-brown background two naked men are entwined, fighting with each other, tremendous and terrible. Strong fingers are digging into pale flesh, muscles are bulging, distorted by the tension, the twist of the bodies. One of them, ferocious and conquering, is standing above the other, dragging his head back, on the verge of bitting into the exposed throat. The savagery of it is heartstopping.“Dante et Virgile, de William Bouguereau,” says Hannibal à la française, the words easy on his tongue.Fic and art for the Ravage anthology.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Series: Hannibal fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1536361
Comments: 6
Kudos: 42
Collections: RAVAGE - An Infernal Hannibal Anthology





	With Such Fell Cruelty [Illustrated]

**Author's Note:**

> The fic and art have been created for the wonderful Ravage anthology, by @lovecrimebooks, for the 8th Circle of Dante’s Inferno… And it was the occasion to pay homage to my favorite painting in the Musée d'Orsay... which I'm convinced is also Hannibal's favorite. :D
> 
> Thank you as always to Sunlit-Stone for the wonderful beta reading!

Will stops to investigate a sculpture of a young faun playing with a bear cub, and when he looks around again Hannibal is gone.

He finds him in one of the side alleys, away from the marble nave of the old train station, standing in front of a monumental painting, hands crossed at his back, indifferent to the milling crowd passing him by. Will is reminded of the museum in Florence, of the ache of seeing each other for the first time after so long, their first meeting totally devoid of pretense, at least in appearance. Now he knows they were still dissembling. He knows he was at least, if only to himself: pretending he had risen above the pain and betrayal, pretending he couldn’t bear what Hannibal was, pretending to himself he could still be saved, he could still be good…

And now, four years later; another city, another museum, and them, wearing their scar tissues under the veneer of normality, two lions walking among the unsuspecting herd, lying still... 

Hannibal seems captivated by something and Will joins him at a sedate pace, comes to a stop by his shoulder.

“Oh.”

On a dark red-brown background two naked men are entwined, fighting with each other, tremendous and terrible. Strong fingers are digging into pale flesh, muscles are bulging, distorted by the tension, the twist of the bodies. One of them, ferocious and conquering, is standing above the other, dragging his head back, on the verge of bitting into the exposed throat. The savagery of it is heartstopping.

“_Dante et Virgile_, de William Bouguereau,” says Hannibal _à la française, _the words easy on his tongue.

“They are amazing,” answers Will to the unvoiced appreciation.

“Aren’t they?” Hannibal’s pleasure at his agreement is obvious. “Dante and Virgil are actually in the background...” He points to the two figures watching the scene, draped in capes as if they could protect themselves from the unseemly violence taking place in front of them. “The fighters are damned souls from the Eighth Circle of Hell.”

“What did they do?”

“The Malebolge is where sinners who committed fraud are punished… Gianni Schicchi was paid to impersonate a dead man in order to dictate a new will, and Capocchio was condemned as an alchemist, but also an artist, well-known in his days for his extraordinary talent for mimicking others and nature… The painting is supposed to be a warning for the righteous, a picture of what sinners can devolve to… But the way Bouguereau paints them isn’t quite a cautionary _tableau, _is it? It is powerfully fascinating and it invokes a feeling of fright, yes, but also of awe. Dante and Virgil are supposed to represent the spectator recoiling from the display, and yet their horror only seems timid and timorous in comparison to the savage magnificence of the fight. It is a remarkable painting.”

“Well, I can certainly see why you like it,” says Will with a wry turn of his lips. “Did you ever see yourself in it? As one of the damned maybe?”

Hannibal accepts his partner’s biting insight with a small nod, thoughtful but also quite unrepentant.

“Certainly I could be said to be guilty of Fraud, if maybe not the kind Dante had in mind for this part of the Inferno. I lied about who and what I was, I framed other people for my crimes and probably even worse from Dante’s point of view, I did so with malice and full knowledge of my actions, which is the greatest sin in God’s eyes.”

“You pretended to be someone you were not, someone kind and reliable, someone normal; you framed people, manipulated them into taking the fall for your sins, tricked the world into believing they were you... And I guess that feeding human flesh to your guests and telling them it’s pork probably would have been enough for you to qualify…”

They share a look. Will’s words are cutting, but there is also amused fondness between them, in this taut thread of understanding they share. They stand in front of the painting in silence for a while and Will feels like he used to at crime scenes, watching the world peel back in front of his unseeing eyes until all the varnish is gone and he can see clearly... only this time it is Hannibal he is watching, a vision startling in its intensity, something new he had only glimpsed before, suddenly revealed.

“Masks over masks, pieces of a great puzzle that once assembled only shows part of the truth. Playing at humanity, making up personas for the world to see...”

“Go on...”

Now Hannibal is intrigued and Will’s smile when he keeps on speaking is a blade by itself.

“_Il Monstro_, the Ripper, the copycat… They were only parts of what you do. Narratives, selected parts, fit for public consumption… You could have avoided the theatricality, stayed hidden altogether, couldn’t you? And sometimes you did, but sometimes not... You were a creature standing at the center of a labyrinth made of mirrors. No one could see you fully, only shards of light, curated reflections. Killers, scapegoats, aspects of you all of them, parts of your design, performances of your cruelty… But not you. Never all of you. Some were closer of course, there was truth in them even, but even the Baltimore psychiatrist was but another fragment, another deception. The one you liked best maybe, the most comfortable for a time, all refined tastes and over-the-top decorations, posh suits and posh pastimes…”

Hannibal’s mouth is a thin line now, but his eyes are intent, all his formidable attention entirely on Will.

“You even fell for it a little bit I think, your own lies. I did too of course, it was the only way to get to know you, I had to start somewhere… But I spent a long time lost in your labyrinth with only a blood thread to guide me, hurting myself on the sharp edges of your reflections, circling, getting closer…”

“And?”

“And I couldn’t find you, because I had yet to understand that I was standing at the center of my own labyrinth as well, and that the persona I thought of as myself was but a part of it, that I could have other shades also, and yet still be myself. Be more myself.”

“I lied to the world, but you did too. And you lied to me… Did you know that the seducers are part of the Eighth Circle?”

How sharp this pain, behind them now and yet still so stark. How strange to see it reflected in Hannibal, who plays such a good game of imperviousness… But Will sees everything: the faults Hannibal would have kept concealed even from himself, the enduring hurt.

“I lied to myself before I lied to you. I played the part you wanted me to play, without realising how close from home it was striking. And once I had a taste of it I couldn’t go back, even though I tried.”

“And now?”

“Do you have to ask?”

“Please, Will,” and the way he says it, the unveiled need makes a shiver bloom along Will’s spine.

“Now I see past the mask and the pretense, and both our wishes are fulfilled. We are standing together at the center of our intertwined labyrinths. Apart and yet together, in full view of each other. No more lies.”

“But not in view of the world.”

“Indeed. And so we are both falsifiers, and maybe we are each other’s damnation.”

As he says it he knows how right it is, how overwhelmingly true. Hannibal seems to know it too and he backs Will to the wall, bends his head close, inhales the scent at his throat as if it were oxygen to a drowning man, even if it’s nothing particular, just the soap from their rented bathroom, a bit of old sweat from a warm day walking around in Paris.

It was a risk but Hannibal insisted, and now Will suspects it was maybe only for this museum, this painting. This very conversation, perhaps. Perish the thought of Hannibal asking for anything without having to cloak himself in metaphors and nebulous statements first…

But to be fair Will spent a long time running, too; kept clinging to some of his masks even after the fall, after the choice. But now he feels too big for his skin, scraped raw because saying it out loud made it true, inescapable. There is no going back for either of them and if they are really together in this, past the pretenses and entwined in damnation, then it is time for Hannibal to know it, too.

“Do you see us as the men in the painting then? The sinners tearing each other apart?” He bares his neck in a suggestive mimicry of the losing man, half as a distraction from the uncomfortable elation building under his skin, half because sometimes nothing is better than calling Hannibal out on his predictability, if only to see that glorious savageness lurking behind his eyes, that moment when he knows that Will is playing him and they both know he chooses to allow it anyway. But Hannibal surprises him again, only presses closer, whispers in the intimacy of a shared breath.

“If we are, then you are certainly the one doing the tearing...” 

And this is another searing truth, another revelation that clicks perfectly in the space between them, Hannibal’s last mask falling away. No more lies.

“Am I?”

“You know you are.”

And he does.

___  
[](https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/jainas/11160470/98435/98435_original.jpg)


End file.
